"You Can Have A Good Life With Just Gig Jobs!" - More Lies From The Neolibs

It is little wonder most citizens can't keep up with the array of interests inveighing against their welfare. They barely have time to keep up with their jobs and time demands on the home front, including caregiving for elderly parents or raising kids, far less sustain their reading. The last, especially on political and economic issues that most concern them.  Yet they are foolishly browbeaten to have more kids to keep up the necessary economic activity to avoid a low growth, flatlined GDP.  See e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2016/04/neoliberal-global-population-pushers.html

As I wrote in that prior post, the Neolibs are wrong  because it is just too damned expensive for most people to raise a single child (especially without full government assistance) to maturity, far less more. Ask Paul and Shannon Tweed (TIME, Oct. 24, p. 40), where we first learn they "had found an in-home child care provider who charged $500 a month. But two years later the monthly cost doubled when a second child was born."

And, most astonishing:

"Now, every month the Tweeds spend $1,100 out of pocket to care for their kids while they work, just $28 less than they pay for their mortgage."

And in addition: "If their basic costs were not overwhelming enough their oldest son was diagnosed on the autism spectrum."

Of course, the Neoliberal solution to the Tweeds' plight is to offer "tax credits" which, as Shannon Tweed observed,  would barely cover one fifth of their out of pocket costs. But hey, it's a  gimmick the Neoliberal pols love and we'll be sure to see lots more if Trump somehow sneaks into office. Then he will  need plenty of tax credits to implement the 40 percent cuts to gov't programs he wants to support his tax cuts. A new iteration of "let them eat cake"? Maybe.

Enter a recent NY Times Business Section essay, 'Good Lives Without Good Jobs', in which we learn "94.6 % of jobs added from 2014 to 2024 will be in the service sector" in other words, poorly remunerated and putting more pressures on families than even the Tweeds ($72,000 /yr. earners) have experienced. Where can those families go for help? The corporations won't help, they're already cutting worker benefits, e.g. "fewer employers are providing health insurance to their workers."  Other employers are making them pay much more via higher deductibles. As finance columnist Jill Schlesinger wrote in yesterday's Denver Post Business Section:

"Deductibles have soared 49 percent since 2011 to an average of $1,478."

That is the amount workers themselves will have to pay, on average, before  their insurance coughs up one thin dime for their health care. And it's getting worse.

Then we get to the nitty gritty:

"American policy makers have responded to the declines of high wage jobs and generous employer benefits by gradually expanding the role of the government in ensuring that Americans have adequate income and adequate benefits. Most of this expansion has taken place in what the political scientist Christopher Howard calls 'the hidden welfare state'".

The authors go on to assert:

"This huge government sector is made up of tax credits, federal grants in aid to the states, and low interest loan programs like student loans. Many of these indirect programs, like entitlements and tax breaks for health care, retirement and housing, are not counted as part of the conventional federal budget."

Failing to note that a good portion of military, defense spending isn't either. Indeed, the Pentagon still isn't held to regular account for its spending, or over spending, including on boondoggles like missile defense and the F-35.  Former defense analyst Chuck Spinney pointed out in a 2002 Bill Moyers interview how the Defense Dept. still can't account for  $1.1 trillion they were given in the 1990s.

At this point, let's be reminded of what the Neoliberal agenda is all about, citing the words of Baltimore Sun columnist Jay Bookman ('The New World Disorder', 1998):

"The global economy has been constructed on the premise that government guarantees of security and protection must be avoided at all costs, because they discourage personal initiative."

If this is so, then logically the Neoliberal will be foursquare against any and all government assistance or expansion of services which they call "socialization of benefits".  Playing into this meme, the authors write:

"In terms of social welfare spending, the United States seems miserly compared with many other developed nations. But according to a recent study for the Peterson Institute for International  Economics by Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, this is an illusion. When tax -favored, private social spending is combined with public spending, American public expenditures at 20.8 percent are only a little lower than the average of 21 states in the European Union."

But this mixes apples and oranges, and especially can't be trusted coming from the likes of  the Peterson Institute. As I pointed out in a post from 2013, in focusing on the 'Fix the Debt'  operation e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/01/fix-debt-cover-to-undermine-your-future.html

"SourceWatch’s  site PetersonPyramid.org informed us that, in reality, the “Campaign to Fix the Debt” was just the latest effort by Peter G. Peterson and a bunch of his billionaire friends and corporate cronies to chop away at Social Security and Medicare. All in the name of fixing America’s “debt problem”.

In other words, the Peterson bunch is at the very heart of the Neoliberal program to strip economic security from citizens.  As for the quoted section above, let's be clear "tax -favored PRIVATE social spending" is just a fancy euphemism for charity. So the Peterson PR hack is comparing the likes of millions like me donating some $1,500 a year to charities with government public spending and services.  (Also, let me insert here that I - like many others - don't get anything "tax -favored" because we don't meet the threshold for charitable donations to make deductions.)   So, the correct comparison is between total American public spending, no charity component, and total EU public spending - which when done- does indeed show the American contribution is "miserly". And these two are compared on the bases of taxes paid in, not tax deductions for charity by private persons, groups,

But see, the PR machine of the Neoliberals can't afford to allow such rational, logical comparisons because it contradicts their narrative that people in this country really are on their own, and were it not for charities - like Covenant House, Salvation Army, CARE etc. as well as open soup kitchens and food pantries,  there'd be many millions more homeless and hungry each year.

The actual Neoliberal bent of the authors emerges at the very end, when we behold their prescription for the American worker:

"Until most American workers are persuaded that they will not be worse off in a system characterized by flexible work arrangements and partly socialized benefits  they make continue to make unrealistic demands .... Politicians should tell working Americans what they need to hear not what they want to hear. And what they need to hear is that it is possible for all Americans to have good lives, even if they can't have good jobs."

In other words,  lo and behold,  the "good life" is possible without having a good job. Just put together fifteen or twenty "gig" jobs (e.g. Uber, Task rabbit)  a day and you might make it too!  Oh, and just be sure you don't have more kids than you can afford, especially for child care and college. It also will help to have a list of charities ready in case you need food or services.

What these Neoliberal purveyors of bollocks- like at the Peterson Institute - always neglect to mention is that in order to have a "good life"  the nation must increase the availability of high productivity jobs that pay superior wages.  There are no short cuts here, and insisting workers suck it up and go the route of "flexible work arrangements" (Gig jobs) is an insult to working families everywhere.

What is needed then is not more trade deals to dispatch good jobs overseas, but massive capital investment in the U.S. by the same national and multinational corporations that stand to benefit from the current 'hyper-globalization".  It cannot be done by a few nips at the margins, or by tossing a few dried bones to the Plebes in the form of special job training, trade adjustment assistance or other public welfare spending.

But any success on this score implies we the people gaining control over the Neoliberal Plutocrats like Peter G. Peterson, as opposed to them running the system to our disadvantage.

See also:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/paul-buchheit/69740/how-a-disappearing-and-deluded-middle-class-awaits-the-new-president


And:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/john-stanton/69721/usa-continues-drive-to-plutocracy-dismantling-of-state

Again - Why Gov. Brownback's Welfare Decision Is Wrong and Could Rebound On Other Gov't Benefit Recipients

I know the hard hearts, austerity hawks and "entitlement" haters won't like this, but it is time to return to Sam Brownback's ill -conceived notion for limiting what Kansas food stamp-welfare recipients can purchase.  I am hoping this time around something sticks to their craniums and shows - especially if they are receiving any kind of government largesse- including Social Security or VA benefits, they ought not to be so quick to hurl stones at others living in "glass houses". (Which umbrella covers all who get benefits of ANY kind)

A must -read op-ed here is that by Emily Badger of the Washington Post ('What Kansas Gets Wrong with Welfare Decision').  She comes right out by saying "the logic behind the decision is problematic in at least three really big ways"  after already observing the canard of framing the decision in terms of "protection for the taxpayer who shouldn't be asked to help people who squander gov't money on 'vices'".

This was also exactly the point made by Bill Maher's 'Real Time' guest Michelle Caruso-Cabrera of CNBC on Friday night's  discussion panel. She noted that  exactly the same case could be made concerning Social Security recipients - hence not being able to splurge their benefits on whatever they desired,  including giant burgers and fries  This case would be made, of course, by the same austerity hawks who already believe Social Security to be a "welfare" program and they inhabit both parties but especially the GOP. They include:  former Comptroller David M. Walker, CFR hotshot Richard Haas, the Fix the Debt people, as well as all those who subscribe to Peter G. Peterson's "entitlement" cuts enclave.

This is why - she insisted - it is better to "privatize" Social Security - as Gee Dumbya wanted to do back in 2005, so then taxpayers of the austerity mold would have no comeback. "Social Security beneficiaries would then be able to spend their money on whatever they wanted" she said, "because it would be their own money from their own private accounts". Of course, when Bill pressed her on what would have happened had such private accounts (mainly invested in the stock market) been around in '08 when the market crashed  -she couldn't offer much of a retrospective defense.

But her argument struck me forcefully, because if one considered it carefully, this is exactly the sort of reverse argument the austerity fetishists could summon against any form of gov't benefit. Where it came from or why wouldn't matter to them (as Caruso asserted) you were receiving taxpayer -funded benefits and you ought not be able to blow it on any damned thing you wanted, including pot, booze, porno flicks, or giant Five Guys burgers. The fact the origin of the benefits didn't matter was the major point and showed why the hard hearts supporting Brownback needed to back away- for their own future protection if nothing else!

Anyway, moving on to Emily Badger's other reasons, these include:

1) Economic: There's virtually no evidence that the poor actually spend their money in the rash ways advertised by Brownback.  The poor are actually much more savvy about how they spend their money because they have much less of it - as Gweneth Paltrow learned when she tried the "SNAP Challenge" and gave up after 4 days. (She'd already exceeded the $29/ week  limit.)

2) Moral principle of equivalence:  Similar to the point CNBC's Michelle Caruso made - we "rarely make similar demands of other recipients of government aid", including VA benefits and Social Security.  She observes: "We also don't require Pell Grant recipients to prove they are pursuing a degree that will get them a real job as opposed to say philosophy or English Lit. We don't require wealthy families who cash in on the home interest deduction to prove they're not using their homes as brothels."   In other words, the strings we attach to gov't aid are uniquely for the poor - as if being poor itself is somehow immoral-  requiring criminal monitoring- like for a felon wearing an ankle bracelet.

3) Prejudicial perceptions:  In many ways the lack of application of a moral principle of equivalence (2) arises because Americans who receive other government benefits fail to see they are also in the recipient class. They don't recognize that, like the poor, they are also getting something from the government and hence - at taxpayer expense.  The issue, again, isn't the specific benefit form - whether Medicare, VA benefits, or Social Security - but that ALL come at taxpayer expense.

But this is covered up in two ways: (i) the belief that their benefits are different because they are "special" or "earned" so can't be classed with SNAP or welfare, and (ii) their benefits are always "submerged" (hidden or more concealed) than compared with a SNAP recipient who must actually produce a special card (see image) at the grocer's so is immediately recognized as "on welfare".  Thus, the SNAP card inadvertently becomes a "badge" of shame that enables other gov't beneficiaries to instantly make judgments.

Political scientist Suzanne Mettler, cited by Ms. Badger, calls the judgmental gov't  beneficiaries part of the "submerged benefits state". This means their own benefits are more "out of sight, out of mind". Thus a SNAP card and a welfare check are "incredibly visible ...while tuition tax breaks and Medicare are not".   This submerged state, then,  is evidence of a basic and pervasive double standard.

How to get around it? Various solutions have been proposed including direct deposit of welfare monies  as well as food stamp monies,  into special bank accounts,. The poverty -stricken person then gets a regular debit card that doesn't stand out like some shameful "scarlet letter"  the next time she goes to the supermarket. It's only fair, and it ceases to tar people on account of being in poverty - likely through no fault of their own. (E.g. contracting a chronic disease, or sustaining a severe disability that forces them from the work force.)

Let's also bear in mind the words of author Charles Reich ('Opposing the System', pp. 125-26):

"The claim that government is free to reduce or cut off welfare and other forms of support for people in economic need is totally mistaken. Welfare is not a gift, nor is it, despite frequent assertions, a transfer from those who earn a living to those who are not.  Welfare is rather an obligation from society – and from those who are working- to those who have been deprived of work and the opportunity to earn a living. If we want to speak of transfers, it would be more accurate to say that those with a secure place in the economic system are enjoying a transfer of wealth from those who have been excluded from the economic system. Welfare then is partial compensation for a deprivation of livelihood that allows others to work"


The hard hearts who would deny the poor some minor pleasures, even playing an arcade game or two, buying a lotto ticket (they can dream, can't they?) , a bag of M&Ms  or a swim, need to process that or else possibly admit to being hypocrites in favor of a double moral standard. Because in others' eyes (e.g. austerity hawks), THEY may well be seen as the ones on "welfare"!

Can We Say Republicans Are Craven Budget Hypocrites? YES - We Can!

The Republicans are so full of it, one could almost roll on the floor laughing at their blatant budget hypocrisy. You know their song and dance! Always yapping about "deficits" and "debt" but when crunch time comes - or they win mid-term elections in both houses, or the Presidency - all of that goes by the backboards.

A case in point, revealed in a recent front page Financial Times article ('U.S. Congress Considers Host of Tax Breaks', Nov. 26) is congress' plans to "blow the budget open" with a whole swatch of tax breaks, some of which could be made permanent. Let us bear in mind these nitwits, mainly Repukes, are doing this in an environment which, as the FT notes- has seen a dramatic fall in in the federal deficit, from more than 10 percent of GDP 6 years ago to 2.8 percent of GDP now.

So why the hell go nuts and break the bank when things are just now turning rosy and the fiscal future appears much better? Well, because as is their usual shtick - the Reepos and their lackeys and useful idiots (like Peter G. Peterson and his Foundation, Fix the Debt etc.) want to generate enormous added debt via tax breaks and giveaways in order to justify cuts to social insurance programs like Social Security later. (Indeed, I just received an advanced alert yesterday from the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare that this is precisely what these callous assholes would do.)

One of the most egregious parts of the "mooted deal" - to use the FT's parlance - is the plan to expand and make permanent the R&D tax credit for corporations, which lets companies write off R&D expenses against their tax bills. While it sounds harmless enough, in the past grievous misuse has included writing off 2-3 time more R&D expenses than companies actually used. The FT estimates this could cost $160 billion over ten years, but I suspect that's a gross underestimate. Look instead for it to top $200 b, especially when Big PhRma starts exploiting it.


The FT notes this also "changes the starting point for future tax reform". Indeed! If R&D write-off is made permanent the business sector will have much less reason to back broader reform. Why should they when the pukes are handing them so much on a silver platter? The FT piece adds that it "also lowers the tax base for a revenue neutral package".

All of this is insane given that currently the nation's spending and remaining debt is some 15 times larger than its income via taxes. Our infrastructure alone is literally falling apart with each year it goes untended for maintenance or replacement. If any tax credit ought to be given, it is for company investment in repair of our crumbling infrastructure- water mains (some of which, like here in COS are over 100 years old), sewer lines, and bridges.

And don't for a minute believe the Dems are innocent little angels in all of this! No, they just aren't as bad as the repukes (that dysentery vs. Ebola comparison again). The FT notes, for example, it would include "mass transit and college tuition tax breaks" - likely made permanent - for Charles Schumer of NY.

But the worst omission? The presumptive deal would not make permanent the Earned Income Tax Credit so important to the working poor (i.e. those at Walmart where that store has requested more well off employees to help those in need, with food, care packages etc.)

The FT reports that the White House has "threatened a veto" and in my opinion, they ought to make good on that threat. Indeed, they need to veto this whole absurd  proposed tax package which would send us back to higher deficits we can't afford and allow the debt mongers to after the programs people need.

Leave it to the Reeps to f*ck the country up just when it's beginning to get on the right financial track including lower deficits. Another reminder that elections have consequences and Dem voters need to get their butts out and vote in mid-terms as much as they do in general elections!

Protecting Social Security in Event of Financial Collapse

A recent and critical issue raised by Andrew Biggs in a Wall Street Journal column highlights the large jump in the projections of the Social Security shortfall since 2008. Biggs complains that progressives have responded to the economic collapse by proposing an increase in benefits that would make the shortfall even larger rather than supporting plans for eliminating the projected shortfall. Biggs' focus is exclusively on the solvency of the program, so the actions of progressives can only be understood against the larger economic context.

This is short sighted and absurd.

In fact, an expansion of benefits is a rational response to the economic collapse. Even more so because the collapse was 100 percent preventable and  one of the worst blunders in the history of economic policy-making. Nearly all of it could  have been prevented had two things happened: 1) Preserve the Glass-Steagall Act instead of repealing it in 1999, which allowed commercial banks to engage in investment banking, and 2) Regulate the credit default swaps  - a form of derivative - which took off in 2007-08. These derivatives were responsible for allowing low grade, risky bonds to be rated AAA thereby luring people into them. See e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/02/lights-go-out-on-dismal-science-long.html

As a result of the credit collapse, many people nearing retirement saw their savings disappear as the stock market collapsed, house prices plummeted and they lost their jobs during their peak savings years. Thus, millions of workers had to draw down their savings to support their families at a point where they had planned to be accumulating wealth for retirement. In addition, due to the weakness of the labor market created by high unemployment, tens of millions of workers have been saddled with stagnant wages over the last six years when they could have expected to see real wage growth in the neighborhood of 1.0 percent annually had the economy continued on the path projected in 2008.

In short, the collapse vastly increased the need for Social Security, which is the basis for the response of progressives such as yours truly  We can't afford to impose any cuts, irrespective of type, because all will create even more financial havoc and economic stress. Biggs is correct that the cost of additional benefits will have to be covered at some point, but there is no obvious reason that it is necessary to come up with the full plan today. Part of the cost can be recovered by increasing the payroll cap as has been proposed by people across the political spectrum.

It is likely that we will need some increase in the payroll tax at some point, but there is little reason that the exact timing needs to be pinned down today. In the decade from 1980 to 1990 the payroll tax increased by over 2.0 percentage points. In spite of this hike, many conservatives tout the eighties as an economic golden age. It is difficult to see why it would be such a disaster if there were a comparable increase somewhere over the next three decades.

Workers care about their after-tax wages which are primarily determined by what they earn before taxes. Due to economic mismanagement and trade and regulatory policies that were designed to redistribute income upward, most workers have seen very little growth in before-tax wages over the last three decades. If they get an even share of the projected growth in compensation over the next three decades, then before tax compensation will be almost 60 percent higher in 2044 than it is today. It is understandable that progressives would be more focused on ensuring that workers get their fair share of economic growth than the risk that 3-4 percent of these gains might be taken back in tax increases to support their retirement.

Beyond Social Security, Medicare must not be cut either! Fix the Debt parasites have vowed  to expand the means testing of Medicare to lower middle income seniors. According to the Newsletter  of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security And Medicare:

"The proposal would shift billions of dollars in additional costs to beneficiaries by further expanding means testing for Medicare Parts B and D – until 25% of all beneficiaries are paying higher, income related premiums. A recent study found that this proposal would eventually impact individuals with annual incomes equivalent to $47,000 in today’s money.”


Let’s make it clear here that $47,000 /yr. is not a princely sum for an annual income, especially for seniors who – unlike younger folks- are burdened by additional health care costs including more medications, as well as the possibility of having to enter a nursing home for everything from a broken hip, to Alzheimers. The nursing homes are not cheap at $3,000 a month or more. Hence, this expanded means testing is nothing short of deplorable. The fact that the richest 1% will still make out like bandits while lower middle income seniors suffer is even more disgusting.


The NCPSSM Newsletter went on to note that this expanded means testing along with a chained CPI for Social Security, and possibly higher eligibility age for Medicare would:


“generate a tsunami of seniors living in poverty”


Setting the cuts in stark contrast to the wealthy tax payers, the Newsletter goes on:

"The benefit cut resulting from the chained CPI proposal alone would result in Social Security beneficiaries losing about 2 percent of their income, while the 2013 tax increase on wealthy Americans earning $500,000 results in a negligible 0.6 percent loss’


Process that difference! For the half million a year wealthy guy his piddling 0.6% loss is barely equal to the current cost of one share in his favorite hedge funds or a 1/10  kt blood diamond. For the senior it would equal a month's worth of blood pressure and diabetes meds and half his groceries. Do the rich Neoliberals who make up most of the Beltway's blabber set care? Of course not!

In other words, the confluence of benefits cuts is designed to increase inequality and poverty rates dramatically (already 15% of seniors live at or below the poverty line)

By contrast, the increase of Social Security benefits will not only protect it for seniors who need it, but also compensate them for lost wages in the wake of the 2008 meltdown - after which they were unable to get jobs.  Such an increase in Social Security payments can also be justified given how much congress has ransacked over the years - which I enumerate below:

The following data shows how much has been raided each year, the data from the same Trust Fund sources and GAO:

Year:  ................Amount raided

2011.................$67.0 billion

2010.................$87.0 billion

2009...............$137.0 billion

2008...............$180.2 billion

2007...............$186.0 billion

2006...............$185.5 billion

2005..............$173.5 billion

2004..............$151.1 billion

2003.............$155.6 billion

2002.............$159.0 billion

2001.............$163.0 billion

2000.............$151.8 billion
----------------------------

TOTAL:  $2.63 TRILLION

Thus increasing S.S. payments by 10% or so would be an excellent way to start paying that stolen money back to beneficiaries who deserve it.  The worker-to -beneficiary ratio is a red herring meant to deflect attention from the REAL problem which is the yearly raids on monies received from payroll taxes and intended to go to future beneficiaries! So long as these raids continue unabated, NO solution or "re-tooling" of the program will work, not raising payroll taxes, not making cuts, NOTHING!

But providing a significant Social Security increase would at least demonstrate to beneficiaries that their government is operating in good faith with their interests at heart.

An even more important immediate way to do that is to halt the shuttering of Social Security field offices. The Social Security Administration has been forced to close dozens of field offices around the country, thereby limiting access to seniors whose only way may be face-to-face appearance with administrators.   Meanwhile, the Senate Special Committee on Aging held a hearing two months ago after a bipartisan report showed Social Security has closed 64 field offices since 2010, the highest number of closures in a 5-year period in history. (Denver Post, June 19, ‘Agency closes field offices’, p. 18A)

 

Interestingly, as the article also points out (ibid.):

“The closings came as applications for retirement and disability benefits are soaring”.

In other words, those who want to kill S.S. via the back door  are adopting the exact same back-handed methods they did with injured vets seeking VA care. In that case, the miserable fuckers declined to approve $24b to expand VA facilities for care – thereby creating the recent crisis we beheld. According to the Post article, again echoing what’s gone on with vets seeking care in the VA system:

“Seniors seeking information and help from the agency are facing increasingly long waits, in person and on the phone.”

Blogger R. J. Eskow wrote in June on the Huffington Post that:  “many disabled and elderly Social Security recipients depend on field offices, and the workers in them.” And as Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times said, “They haven’t been able to cut benefits, so they’re doing the next best thing: making it hard for you to know what you’re due, and harder to get it when it comes due.”

The bottom line is, Americans came together to create the Social Security system to provide a basic, reliable foundation for retirement and disability. Closing field offices and making it more difficult to access benefits information is an attempt to dismantle that foundation.

 

But even before we try to get congress to increase Social Security payments we have to ensure those field offices remain open so that millions of people can access their benefits in the first place! The push to strengthen benefits and enhance them is pointless if the yearly raids on S.S. continue unabated and the Repos keep using budget cuts to shutter S.S. admin offices!

Neoliberal Beltway Media "Distraught" at Obama's Upcoming Budget Decision

The Beltway media, and their allied Neo-lib ass kissers are all bent out of shape and in a state of distraught disarray.  They are miffed that Obama hasn’t subjugated himself yet again to their Neoliberal Imperative – which is to pull any and every fringe or thread of security out from under citizens. It’s almost as if they’d love to see a Ukraine type mammoth protest play out here in the US of A.

While Obama has abandoned (for now) the absurd plan for a “chained CPI” – to cut back on Social Security benefits (despite the fact S.S. is forbidden by law to contribute to the deficit), the Beltway hacks and blow-drieds aren’t too happy. They wanted to hear it on the tube, and see the oldsters weep as their own Prez screwed them over.

 Well, it’s not to be – as the Left – through a dedicated campaign, forced Obama to take stock and realize he was batting on a losing wicket, see e.g.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/richard-eskow/54446/yes-the-left-killed-the-chained-cpi

 

Excerpt:

“As for the president and his supporters, it is clear that the chained CPI is well-liked by both the White House's key economic players -- and by many of the commentators who support them. That's unfortunate, because it is inaccurate, unjust, and economically unwise. But like it, they do.

It appears that both the Republicans and the White House like it, but neither wants such a politically unpopular measure hung around their neck -- especially in an election year.”

Despite that, the Neoliberal jackasses and professional deficit scolds (which class includes much of the supposedly objective American political press) are dismayed. They are practically weeping that they can no longer yap their blow- dried thick heads off about cuts to Social Security. Why, they are asking, can’t American politicians simply grow up and cut social insurance programs?  Well, because it’s a third rail you inveterate morons!

Of course, since Watergate and the commercialization of news as well as contamination via PR, the WaPo has long since to function in citizens’ interest so no surprise that Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt excoriated Obama’s decision to abandon a politically untenable Social Security cut. This moron, believe it or not, actually compared that decision,  to Syria, scribbling:

 

“Did the president really once believe that the United States could no longer kick the can down the road on entitlement reform?”

But it just goes to show even low I.Q. people can rise to very influential heights.

Meanwhile, another dilettante, a political scientist named Adolph Reed Jr.,  recently asked in Harper’s Magazine,  that IF Obama is ‘an unexceptional neoliberal Democrat with an exceptional knack for self-presentation, Why do neoliberal Democrats feel disappointed, too?”

I beg pardon, but to me a “Neoliberal Democrat” is an oxymoron. But maybe not, given so many have seemed to have taken the Neoliberal kool aid in the last 30 years. (Which again, is one reason I left the Dem party for the Democratic Socialists) In any case, who gives a rat’s ass how many of these parasites are “disappointed”? I don’t!

But as salon.com’s Alex Pareene suggests:

“Maybe you’re disappointed because every Western government fully adopted your worldview decades ago and the result has been a new Gilded Age that you can’t blame on reckless Big Government New Deal Democrat”

Back to the Neolib hack Hiatt. While referencing  Medicare as  “the primary driver of entitlement spending,”  he ignores the fact that it’s already projected to cost much less in the future than it was before Obamacare, because the latter slashes nearly $500b off its tag. And we won’t even go into how the earlier sequester cuts seriously slashed reimbursement for cancer treatments.

 What planet is this twit living on? Isn’t he aware of any of this? Obviously, he perceives a target of opportunity because Medicare is usually yoked to Social Security, and one mandate of the Neolibs is to use Medicare costs to justify a preexisting desire to cut Social Security.

If Hiatt were really serious about lowering the long-term deficit by the most effective means possible, as opposed to the most regressive, then he’d opt for severe cuts to the Pentagon’s bloated budget. Say like scrapping the F-35 of which 2,400 are planned with a cost (currently) of $125m each.  Oh, and also pushing for total pullout from Afghanistan and – a final end of the Bush tax cuts for ALL. Those steps would solve all budget problems instantly – but the Neolibs would rather take the end run way because they’re hot to cut “entitlements”.

Joining Hiatt in disappointment is National Journal leadership correspondent Ron Fournier, who purports to explain that both parties refuse to admit (though both secretly know) that the debt will spiral out of control in the long-term future (like, 2038) unless we get a Grand Bargain.  Horse shit! The only ones who profess to know that are the Neoliberal parasites and vermin! (Like the ‘Fix the Debt’ bunch and Peter G. Peterson)

If Beltway centrists – who really believe they’re so much wiser than those “base” Democrats (who think Social Security should be more generous) had a frickin clue they’d pull their heads from their asses and note the  polls that consistently show overwhelming bipartisan majorities in favor of maintaining or expanding Social Security benefits.

But the morons likely think they’re all skewed.

Then there’s MSNBC’s  resident Neolib hack, Chuck Todd, who had a brief requiem for the seemingly dead grand bargain in yesterday morning’s “First Take.” In just one brief paragraph, this dope managed to hit just about every single trope common to Beltway centrist deficit scolds, from treating an unpopular and unnecessary plan to cut social insurance programs as “a universally acknowledged urgent necessity” instead of a highly ideological goal, to bemoaning the fact that politicians who support unpopular things are campaigned against for supporting unpopular things.

Do the Neolib media hacks really want to know why achieving entitlement reform — even on an incremental, bipartisan basis — is so difficult in American politics? Because it is deeply unpopular with actual voters who recognize it as a shitty deal for everyone but the rich.   If the Neoliberal media wasn't so uniformly blinded to that reality, and so ignorant that the majority of Americans want and demand the same security as the wealthy, they'd be more objective. Alas, they aren't - so they can't be.

In the meantime, the progressive Left will relax for the time being, but be wary of any further efforts to sacrifice citizens to the Neoliberal Gargoyle of Greed.

 

Let's Not Get Punked By The Neoliberals Again - With the "Trans-Pacific Partnership"

Someone asked maybe a month ago, in an unpublished comment, why I always depict the Neoliberals like a mutant bat-rat type creature with feral eyes, grasping a pile of money. Well, because that is how I image these types: money-grubbing, feral ratty bats that could give a damn about the rest of us, so long as they get the corner on their mythical "free market". (Which is in fact a coercive market for the 99%)

And, of course, one must always keep one eye open for these rats - say like the 'Fix the Debt' bunch, and any new initiative they try to slink by us. Since they're rats, they will try anything ....from bamboozling bollocks about "benefits" to over the top PR (such as applies to fracking). They never miss a beat.

Now, thanks to  Wikileaks (why not our precious mainstream media? ) we have learned about the TPP or Trans-Pacific Partnership, another way to screw with us like the earlier GATT and NAFTA.

According to the Guardian, WikiLeaks has released the draft text of a chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, a multilateral free-trade treaty currently being negotiated in secret by 12 Pacific Rim nations. The full agreement covers a number of areas, but the chapter published by WikiLeaks focuses on intellectual property rights, an area of law which has effects in areas as diverse as pharmaceuticals and civil liberties.

Negotiations for the TPP have included representatives from the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Mexico, Malaysia, Chile, Singapore, Peru, Vietnam, and Brunei, but have been conducted behind closed doors. Even members of the US Congress were only allowed to view selected portions of the documents under supervision. Peter Bradwell, policy director of the London-based Open Rights Group says:

"We're really worried about a process which is so difficult for those who take an interest in these agreements to deal with. We rely on leaks like these to know what people are talking about,"

He adds:


"Lots of people in civil society have stressed that being more transparent, and talking about the text on the table, is crucial to give treaties like this any legitimacy. We shouldn't have to rely on leaks to start a debate about what's in then."

Indeed.

The 30,000 word intellectual property chapter contains proposals to increase the term of patents, including medical patents, beyond 20 years, and lower global standards for patentability. It also pushes for aggressive measures to prevent hackers breaking copyright protection, although that comes with some exceptions: protection can be broken in the course of "lawfully authorized activities carried out by government employees, agents, or contractors for the purpose of law enforcement, intelligence, essential security, or similar governmental purposes".


WikiLeaks claims that the text shows America attempting to enforce its highly restrictive vision of intellectual property on the world – and on itself. "The US administration is aggressively pushing the TPP through the US legislative process on the sly," says Julian Assange, the founder and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, who is living in the Ecuadorean embassy in London

Is this Assange torqued because he has to hole up in an embassy in London? Is he just venting because of the extent to which his operation has been downsized?  Not so fast.

Thomas Hartmann, writing on the smirkingchimp.com blog today observes:

" This week, Americans got a peek behind the curtain of the Trans Pacific Partnership, and what we found is frightening. On Thursday, Wikileaks published a complete draft of the “intellectual property rights” chapter of the TPP, and it poses a serious risk to free speech and information access. The document contains proposals that would change copyright and patent laws, so-called fair use practices, and the liabilities for alleged violations.

The provisions would stifle innovation, creativity, and information sharing, all under the guise of protecting intellectual property. And, many of the proposed changes are being suggested by US negotiators. Opposition to these restrictive policies is coming from other nations, like Canada, Chile, Malaysia, and New Zealand."

If an informed citizenry is the basis for democracy, why are we being kept in the dark? Perhaps because we no longer have a democracy  but a corporatocracy! If we really are a democracy then we need to heed Hartmann's words:

"Unions, civil rights advocates, environmental activists, and many other groups are demanding that the details of the TPP are made public. Before this massive trade deal is signed, Americans have the right to know what it contains, and the right to demand that our elected leaders say “No” to the TPP. -"

A New Insult: Expanding Means Testing for Lower Middle Income Seniors

The notice in the Newsletter from the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare was blunt and to the point. A new “proposal” before congress- hell bent on appeasing the Fix the Debt parasites- is to expand the means testing of Medicare to lower middle income seniors. According to the Newsletter:

"The proposal would shift billions of dollars in additional costs to beneficiaries by further expanding means testing for Medicare Parts B and D – until 25% of all beneficiaries are paying higher, income related premiums. A recent study found that this proposal would eventually impact individuals with annual incomes equivalent to $47,000 in today’s money.”


Let’s make it clear here that $47,000 /yr. is not a princely sum for an annual income, especially for seniors who – unlike younger folks- are burdened by additional health care costs including more medications, as well as the possibility of having to enter a nursing home for everything from a broken hip, to Alzheimers. The nursing homes are not cheap at $3,000 a month or more. Hence, this expanded means testing is nothing short of deplorable. The fact that the richest 1% will still make out like bandits while lower middle income seniors suffer is even more disgusting.


The NCPSSM Newsletter went on to note that this expanded means testing along with a chained CPI for Social Security, and possibly higher eligibility age for Medicare would:


“generate a tsunami of seniors living in poverty”


Setting the cuts in stark contrast to the wealthy tax payers, the Newsletter goes on:

"The benefit cut resulting from the chained CPI proposal alone would result in Social Security beneficiaries losing about 2 percent of their income, while the 2013 tax increase on wealthy Americans earning $500,000 results in a negligible 0.6 percent loss’


Process that difference! For the half million a year wealthy guy his piddling 0.6% loss is barely equal to the current cost of one share in his favorite hedge fund or a 1/10  kt blood diamond. For the senior it would equal a month's worth of blood pressure and diabetes meds. Do the rich Neoliberals who make up most of the Beltway's blabber set care? Of course not!

In other words, the confluence of benefits cuts is designed to increase inequality and poverty rates dramatically (already 15% of seniors live at or below the poverty line)


Note also that all those talking heads, Neoliberal hacks and flacks, including Joe Klein and Fareed Zakaria of TIME, and “legal” leaker Bob Woodward, who advocate “entitlement cuts” – are themselves sitting pretty and have no need for “entitlements” at all. They neither see or care about the fact that half of seniors barely get $22,000 a year in benefits, and that the U.S. is amongst the stingiest of developed nations in terms of social insurance. In other words, these Neoliberal twerps essentially support ‘Fix the Debt’ and Pete Peterson who insist the weakest and most vulnerable in the nation take the hit so the Neoliberal free marketeers and speculators can continue their fun run with the DOW – and expand their takings.


The NCPSSM solution will be to bombard congress with petitions from millions of its members. The message is firm and unambiguous: there must be NO willingness to compromise in any September debt ceiling showdown such that seniors’ lives and well being is sacrificed. The rich will have to pay their fair share and that must mean higher taxes, as opposed to socking it to the elderly!

For the link to see who's really behind such savage cuts and means-testing, go to: www.petersonPyramid.org

CFR Prez Richard Haass: Oldsters "Stealing from Our Children!"

Richard Haass clearly HAAAAAS NO sense, or powers of minimal perception, or discrimination. In his TIME essay (‘Bringing it all back home’, March 13, p. 19) this president of the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR – a hotshot group of elites that weighs in on foreign policy) clearly names the proverbial elephant in the room. That is, the ‘elephant’ responsible for drowning us in debt-deficits and leaving our domestic needs unattended and the country in tatters. In his own words:

“Many participants in the foreign policy debate appear to have forgotten the injunction of former President John Quincy Adams that America ‘goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy’.
Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan (as of 2009) was a war of necessity; more important neither was a justifiable war of choice.. In both cases, the interests at stake were decidedly less than vital.”


Here he names the ‘elephant’ laying waste to the domestic landscape:  the gross, even malignant expansion of the Military Industrial- Complex. The Complex and political establishment invested in the insane policy of perpetual war, that has drained us dry and made the country even more vulnerable to terrorism than it would have been had we not stuck our nose in where it never belonged. Indeed, even now the drone missions are increasing Terrorism like a cancer, even as Guantanamo is.


This Military malignancy has already drained us of over $4 trillion and it may well be much more, when all the medical needs of the returned Iraq and Afghanistan vets are tended to, as well as their future disability benefits finally paid for.


Yet despite naming the ‘elephant’ clearly, Haass wanders off the beaten path and points to seniors receiving Social Security or on Medicare STEALING "from our children"! He states in another paragraph that we haven’t attended to those domestic priorities left orphans by our overseas meddling. True enough! Then he adds: we've been “lurching from crisis to crisis almost going off fiscal cliffs…..stealing from our children by refusing to rein in spending on Medicare and retirement”.


How did this inept bozo mess up so badly? First he commits the equivocation and conflation error by using ambiguous verbiage that fails to distinguish the actual culpable agents (i.,e. Repuke Tea Baggers) who created the fiscal cliff panic and (2011) debt ceiling crisis  from those CITIZENS who are Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries. People who had NADA to do with either of the former! Second, he compounds this equivocation error by accusing the willfully conflated group  (innocent older citizens) of committing theft on future generations! This goes beyond a lack of temperance to total lack of basic common sense.

Perhaps a fact or two may assist this chuckle head. Fact one: Tens of thousands of seniors with cancer who need chemotherapy have been turned away from Cancer centers (that deliver the treatments) thanks to just 2% cuts to Medicare providers. This arrived thanks to the brutal sledge hammer of the “Sequester”. Meanwhile, let us note the insane military weapons brigade has had to suffer NO cuts at all ZERO! Not one! They managed to finagle an exception.

Haass is also evidently oblivious to the fact that Social Security hasn’t contributed to the deficit and indeed, legally is forbidden by law to do so. Indeed, more than $2.3 trillion of Social Security monies have been raided by congress over the past 15 years. Hence, the claim that it is “stealing” from our children is absolute balderdash.


As for Medicare, Haass needs to direct his CFR gaze to the Medicare Advantage (privatized) program passed by the Bushies in 2003. That privatized version has sent traditional Medicare into insolvency by spending at least $12 billion more per year, while passing additional costs to the premiums paid by standard Medicare beneficiaries.

So, it is reckless in the extreme for Haass – whatever his position in the CFR- to employ such loose, unfactual rhetoric. In fact, he owes seniors on Medicare an apology –especially now we see first hand what even minimal cuts will do.


But in spreading such misbegotten tropes Haass is by no means alone. In the same TIME issue, the Neoliberal clown Joe Klein (author of ‘Primary Colors’) goes off his own deep end in playing the false equivalence game. He actually puts those of us challenging Obama on the Chained CPI issue (for Social Security) in the same "extremist" league as the NRA - which recently shot down a weak gun control law! Is he nuts, or just high?

Klein begins his essay referencing political demagoguery, i.e. “by well funded extremist groups to thwart the will of the overwhelming majority”. In this he accurately names the NRA, which was largely responsible for recently  killing a very tame bill for universal background checks –  with which 90% of Americans approved.

Had he remained focused on that example and expatiated on it, he’d have been fine and I’d not have had to append the clown label. But he didn’t. NO, he then decided to jump on a high horse and pair “demagogue DEMS” with the NRA! This was by using the case of Howard Dean’s brother who recently sent out a letter headed ‘Disgusted’ with the subtitle: ‘President Obama’s Budget Has Left me Disgusted’. This was in reference to Obama's ridiculous inclusion of the "Chained CPI" in his recent budget.


Klein responded in his predictably Neoliberal pundit vernacular:

“Really? WHY? Because the President called for very modest cuts in old age entitlements”.


Errrr NO, Clown! Those were not “very modest cuts”! The Chained-CPI reduces the cost of living adjustment down by 0.3 percentage points annually. That translates into a cut in benefits of 3 percent for those who have been retired ten years, 6 percent after 20 years, and 9 percent after 30 years. The people who have been retired the longest and are, therefore, the poorest, will see the largest cuts. A 1% "bump" isn't going to make much of a difference. This is a cut. And it's substantial. After just ten years a senior will lose an entire month’s benefits – perhaps equal to half what he or she must pay for meds!


Even more noisome to me, but what you'd expect from the coddled  'Wine and brie' DC Elites Klein represents, is a pernicious belief that 70-year-olds who are living on $25k- 35k a year won't feel a cut in their incomes, which just goes to show how detached they are from the way people really live. You factor in ONE major medical emergency or say a breast cancer requiring tamoxifen or long term chemo, and the affected senior is not merely reduced to cat food but out and out garbage! Meanwhile, the rich bastards continue to insist on the gold-plated toilets, special health spas, and trips to St. Kitts over the weekend for 18 holes. It's a god damned disgrace!


Contrary to Klein’s take, Dean’s brother was spot on. It is Klein who is wrong, as much as Richard Haass. The very fact Klein could pair the NRA’s recent antics with Jim Dean’s letter in terms of demagoguery and extremism is as insane as it is odious. Indeed, if TIME had any consistent journalistic standards it would send this overpaid hack packing. Then maybe he could pen another pot-boiler novel, say like 'Primary ASSHoles'


It also shows me that the Neoliberals have now resorted to such warped rhetoric that they can’t even be taken seriously any more. Klein clearly shows, like Haass, that when one ceases to invoke facts and recklessly equates the NRA’s antics to opposition against the Chained CPI or Medicare cuts, there is no longer substance to arguments. In this case, the essays attempted are merely propaganda pieces designed to sway weak minds, or maybe fellow Neolibs.

Despite that, we all need to be aware of how this entrenched political Elite continues to make up lies as it attempts to destroy our social insurance infrastructure. If you want to see the swine really behind it all, including the Reinhart-Rogoff paper that attempted to academically justify austerity - while the rich live high off the low-tax hog - go to www.petersonPyramid.org )

The next time Haass or any other overpaid, self-important hack thinks of playing the "generational war" meme they need to be reminded of the following:

- Seven million children currently live with grandparents - who depend on Social Security to care for them

- 8.5 million other children (including college kids that find themselves jobless and live at home) who live with elder parents that depend on Social Security to make do.

- The tens of millions of 50-plus Americans who, through their tax dollars and Social Security monies, pensions, provide voluntary contributions to support public schools, child health programs, grandparent guardianship programs as well as other charities that care for homeless kids (e.g. Covenant House).

 Concocting war between the generations, pitting young against old, therefore serves no useful or moral purpose. It is merely a cheap, malicious tactic to take attention from the REAL problem: the malignant growth of the Military Industrial Complex to the detriment of all of us outside it!

Haass, having identified the actual "bad guy" in his piece, the Perpetual War mongers, ought to be ashamed of himself for implicating seniors as contributing to the nation's crises. A President of the CFR, one would have thought, would know better.

"Give In To The Irrational GOP?" In A Porker's Eye!

Columnist Michael Grunwald, in a recent TIME article (April 1, p. 18, 'Give In to the Irrational GOP') claims to have the best solution to our continued national kerfuffle over finances, spending and tax cuts. His recommendation to Obama? Give in to the GOP!  Insist on no further tax increases or even closing of tax loopholes for the richest, even though the Reepos will still maintain Social Security cuts be brought forth - despite the fact Social Security didn't contribute a dime to the deficit, and in fact, shameless congressional porkers and pirates have relentlessly raided it to hide the magnitude of the actual deficit!

According to Grunwald ( who concedes we "don't live in a rational world" - but nonetheless appears ready to mandate we all dive head first into an irrational one!):

"The only way Obama could fulfill the punditocracy's dreams of bipartisan agreement would be to drop his demand for new revenues and cave to the tax-phobic Republicans he thumped in November."

Oh really, sonny? Then one might call that November victory useless! Despite a clear choice of the majority of the people, who more than once in polls demanded higher taxes on the rich and NO meddling with Social Security, or Medicare, then Obama is justified in betraying them!

Grunwald goes on to add, disclosing he's a true pundit whore of the Neoliberal Elites:

"So he should cave- not to appease the chattering classes or show the country he's open to compromise. He should cave to ease pain, advance his agenda and improve the country in tangible ways."

Which, of course, is abject nonsense! Because if he caves, and bear in mind among true liberal circles he's already seen as a wuss, then it would mean even harsher social insurance cuts to make up for the lost revenue via taxes.

And we know the Neoliberal Enclave of Whores in D.C. is panting for "entitlement cuts"!  Or as salon.com Michael Lind recently put it:

"Calling for combining cuts in Social Security with more tax giveaways for savings, mostly to the rich, proves that politicians are Very Serious People to their Wall Street donors and to the mainstream media pundits who lionize the conservative deficit hawks Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles."

Oh, and they also lionize the whore front groups like 'Fix the Debt' with their whore front men, such as Ed Rendell, Ernest Bowles and Alice Rivlin.  All of them under the puppet strings of billiionaire Peter G. Peterson, e.g. see www.petersonPyramid.org. As Lind notes about 'Fix the debt':

"FixtheDebt, is one of the “astroturf” (faux-grass roots) anti-entitlement front groups created by right-wing billionaire Pete Peterson and funded by corporations, many of them in the finance industry, is spending tens of millions of dollars in a short time to pressure the public and lawmakers into cutting Social Security and Medicare"

As Felix Salmon noted of the FixtheDebt manifesto (by the front group’s allied CEOs- e.g. see the peterson.org link) , “the letter basically just says ‘please cut our taxes, raise taxes on everybody else, and cut the benefits they get from Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security"

Worse, of course, is how faux liberals aka  "progressives" are meekly playing into the paws of these rats. Lind again, portrays it to a pathetic tee:

"The conservatives and libertarians demand that Social Security be completely abolished. Progressives reply, “Please don’t abolish Social Security completely — would you please consider letting us help you cut it instead?” Playing the role of the wimpy progressive begging for mercy from the hard right, President Barack Obama reportedly may call for cutting Social Security for 80- and 90-year-olds by means of “chained CPI” in his forthcoming budget."

Of course, if Obama is so lame and strupid as to do that, he will forever undercut his profile (and legacy)  in the eyes of liberals who reluctantly went "all in" with him in the last election (somehow suspecting he might renege on promises made), while soiling Democratic election prospects for at least another generation. Indeed, as I already noted, the Democratic Party has paid a huge price just for talking about Social Security cuts. A Social Security Works poll   has shown that the party suffered a stunning 25-point plunge in public confidence between 2005 and 2010 on its ability to do a better job than its opposition to protect the program.


Are the Dems such weak, forlorn wusses that they really wish to go this route? And enrage most of their left base in perpetuity?  Or, do they think that base will always fall in line when the next presidential campaign arrives. Well, they better think again!

As Lind correctly observes:

"Cutting Social Security is backdoor privatization — and a bonanza for Wall Street money managers. Cuts in promised Social Security benefits, whether from chained CPI, a higher retirement age, or means-testing, will force middle-class and working-class Americans to try to save even more money in the tax-favored private savings accounts like 401Ks so beloved by the Wall Street financiers who fund both Democrats and Republicans."

Sadly, it is Neoliberal Business patronage that has contaminated and ruined the Democratic Party, as it has the other corporate (Reepo) party. The Dems have merely disguised it better, but every now and then - especially in the heat of a presidential campaign season - a network crew will bust into a lobby -funded "gala" and show our reps hob nobbing with their CEO -corporate paymasters.

As for Grunwald, he does get one thing right in his piece, noting the Reeps "have offered some flexibility to make cuts....hoping he will be blamed later for making the unpopular ones."

Well, HE will indeed be blamed, if he chooses to cut Social Security.

Anyway, Grunwald goes on to say:

"Fine! Obama can whack programs that don't promote his priorities, like fossil fuel subsidies and sprawl roads; and he can demand back-loaded cuts that won't kill jobs now."

This is okay as far as it goes - but he needs to bear in mind, despite the braying Neoliberal media - that Social Security and Medicare are part of his priorities. What he really ought to be cutting is the military, and ordering every last manjack out of Afghanistan NOW, as opposed to pissing another trillion down the toilet by the end of next year!

Boehner and Ryan Admit Repuke Deficit Hysteria is a Hoax

Well, it’s been a long time coming, but as I’ve been writing over and over on my blog the GOP –fomented deficit crisis is all horse manure. It was invented by Right wing ideologues and billionaires as an excuse to justify gutting social insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare. This has now finally been openly admitted by both Boehner and Ryan on the Sunday Talk Show circuit.


Boehner finally came clean on yesterday’s edition of ABC’s “This Week” and admitted that “we do not have an immediate debt crisis.” (His admission was followed up by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, who quickly echoed much the same sentiment on  CBS’ Face the Nation).

Boehner's confession finally revealed the fact that the GOP’s fiscal alarmism is not some natural reaction to reality, but a calculated means to other ideological ends, namely destruction of the social contract embodied in Social Security and Medicare. Since these rats couldn't do it for decades by way of the front door, they are trying to break through the back door using a deficit crisis. They are aided and abetted in this by the long time ideologue, Peter G. Peterson. ((To learn more about Peterson, his contrived campaign, and his millionaire CEO buddies, go to www.petersonPyramid.org)


TIME finance columnist Rana Forhoohar (March 18, p. 18) also observes that "if you combine cuts previously agreed to in the Budget Control Act of 2011, with the tax increases secured by Obama at the end of last year and add to that things like the associated interest savings and shifts in deficit expectations by the Congressional Budget Office, we are already two thirds of the way there ." (to the $4 trillion 'grand bargain' so many Neoliberals are ga-ga over.)

Indeed, two simple steps (ok, two and a half)  could get us all the way there, or netting the remaining $1.3 trillion: Cutting the defense side of the budget by the $600b allocated for in the sequester, and raising the income tax level to cover the $200,000 income level while raising the payroll tax threshold to the $200,000 level. With these accomplished, neither Obama or anyone else has to make draconian and 'superlative' cuts to Social Security or raise Medicare premiums.

Besides, as Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman has pointed out, “Even if we do run deficits, federal debt as a share of GDP will be substantially less than it was at the end of World War II” and “it will also be substantially less than, say, debt in several European countries in the mid to late 1990s.” It is also lower than the 80 percent of GDP level that many economists say starts to put countries in a precarious position.

    But WHY be surprised at Boehner's dishonesty? Over and over I had related their tactics (and their history) along with their prime directive and objective, emphasizing that Obama had to be smart enough not to play into their game. However, as we beheld in 2011, Obama let his guard down by allowing himself and the nation to be taken to the brink by GOP –Tea Party economic terrorists in the debt ceiling crisis. Panicked, he signed on to a “sequester” which cut equally from the domestic and military sides. The official rationale was that neither party would actually be insane enough to let it go through, but again- he underestimated GOP ideology and insanity. They were prepared to let anything happen, even take the country down a dumpster, in order to cut social benefits.


Now that the GOOPr Deficit game has been exposed, it’s time for Obama to grow a steel spine and reject all their spending cut plans and schemes (UNLESS it’s for defense). If another debt ceiling increase appears like it may be blocked, Obama needs to do what he ought to have two years ago: invoke the 14th amendment! Amendment XIV, Section 4, stipulates:


"The validity of the Public Debt of the United States, authorized by law, includes debts incurred for payment of pensions ....and shall not be questioned."


It is clear to me that if the Republican Congress refuses to act to raise the debt ceiling (and thereby honor the validity of paying the Public Debt) then President Obama can and MUST exercise an Executive Order to override a putatively derelict Congress and invoke Article 4 of Amendment XIV to raise the debt ceiling. The alternative, of not doing so, would also violate Article XIV and be lawless while also violating Sec. 8 of Article I:

"The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises to pay Debts and provide for the common defense and General Welfare of the United States"


As for the GOP -Pentagon warmongers and their media hacks, who want us to believe Afghanistan and Iraq were real wars, this is bollocks. And the proof is in the pudding, i.e. of taxes (as opposed to tax cuts) to pay for them! Real patriots understand that wars have to be paid for out of the common public sacrifice - via higher TAXES. As my dad once told me before he passed away in July, 2009: Anyone calling for no taxes or tax CUTS during a putative wartime (as in WWII) would have been branded unpatriotic at best, and a traitor at worst. So you never heard anyone bitching, pissing and moaning when gas was rationed. Or when income taxes went up!

Not one person complained about heavy new taxes during the four years of the U.S. fighting in the Pacific theater, or in Europe, though we've seen no similar pay-go with over ten years in Afghanistan. Nor did people bitch in the immediate post-war period when the high taxes helped to finance the Marshall Plan - to help pay for the reconstruction of Europe. People were smart enough then to grasp that Europe's stability meant their own - and if they paid NOW (in higher taxes) they would be less likely to pay later in another war.


Indeed, many of those post-war taxes were still in place when the Korean War broke out. Despite ALREADY high taxes, congress passed new taxes in 1950 and 1951 to pay for the costs of the conflict. They had enough sense to know, unlike the useless miscreant tea baggers today, that if you engage in military actions - especially prolonged- they HAVE to be paid for! You can't keep signing a national credit card and expecting future generations to pay the debt!

If the Repukes want to continue to hide behind their phoney baloney deficit lies and obstruction, let them be the first to come out and either fess up that those two "wars" we've allegedly fought were phony wastes of blood and treasure, OR, they were real wars that now have to be PAID for! If the latter and they don't allow the taxes to be raised to do so, they are not merely dissemblers but traitors!

Why WE Have to Pay and the Rich Get Off Scott-Free

TOP: The $65,000 all copper tub that's now a favorite buy of the top 0.1%. Below: their favorite dessert - a $25,000 (apiece) Frrrozen Haute Chocolate. How can they eat this thing every week without choking?

Here's the skinny: The rest of us will be asked to bear ignominous cuts like the Chained CPI - so the richest can continue to lavish themselves with these luxuries with nary a backward step. Odious? You better believe it! But this is what happens when the Neoliberal Imperative believes its speculator dollars are worth more than ours, received for merely breathing!


In the previous blog post I noted the question asked by Political Liars' blog, i.e. of Alice Rivlin - sometime advisor for the Simpson-Bowles Deficit Commission and now a Neoliberal PR specialist:

"Why is cutting benefits to seniors the 'right thing' to do, Alice? Why do we have to pay for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and not the rich? And why do we have to pay for the financial economic collapse and not the rich, Alice? "

The answer, of course, is so the richest can preserve their ultimate luxuries, such as those shown, without missing a beat. Wouldn't want to deprive them of their special tubs, or $25,000 apiece delicacies now, would we? Oh wait, I mustn't do that! No! That's waging "class warfare" on the little turds! Tough shit!

First, what is the one percent income threshold? The lowest threshold level is generally agreed to be $387,000/yr which means the fiscal cliff deal let them keep all their Bush Tax cuts (equal to about one Bentley a year.) The median income is $1.1 million, from the Economic Policy Inst. last posting. Of that, barely one tenth actually goes to taxes, since they can employ special Trusts, write-offs and charity donatioins at will.

Obviously they don't spend solely on Bentleys but their equivalent cash benefit provides them with many options and a multitude of luxuries, including:


- At least one new yacht,

- 10-15 kt diamond jewellry (often necklaces) from Tiffany's - which outfit has recently said they're essentially no longer even token catering to the lesser income types

- Going on luxury golf trips, each month, say to St. Kitts or Aruba.

- Going on special luxury spa and foodie sojourns, say to St. Maarten.


For the latter,  the one percent females can enjoy "chocolate sugar scrubs" and "rose wine wraps" while they wait in comfort for their bottles of bubbly.,....or partake in "other amenities", including: herbal steam room, guided beach walks, poolside yoga or pilates. They also have their choice of one of 33 treatment rooms.

After their ministrations, the one percent wife and hubby can enjoy their special candle-light dining in a special luxury Villla. There, they can feast on endless foie Gras, fresh salmon, lobster thermidor, and as many Magnums of the best champagne as they desire.


Why should they have to worry about disgruntled and curmudgeonly seniors bitching about possible Social Security cuts when they have likely derived the optimum benefits from Wall Street via flash or high speed computer trading, whereby special algorithms are used to buy and sell millions of shares before an ordinary 401k small fry can get to his phone to call in a redemption?

After the 1 percenters' enjoy their  $$75k spa holiday, they can take their yachts anywhere they want, maybe hobnob with friends off Bimini or go to Anguilla for scuba diving among the corals. The wretched seniors soon to be on cat food diets are far, far away. They also may hobnob with fellow wine and brie "liberals" who also favor the chained CPI and believe it to be the solution for the "serious people" - after all, they incessantly quote Bob Woodward's last book: ‘The Price of Politics’ - especially the quote:

"Unsustainable entitlement spending on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security as highlighted by Republican House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan and familiar to all informed politicians and economists....has been left largely unaddressed."


So, I mean, they all breathe with a sigh of relief that Obama's finally finally addressing it! Now they can sleep easier in their temperature -controlled luxury King beds with the built in massagers, built in dildos, and special adjustable "libido" blankets! They are in Neoliberal Heaven!

On finally getting home, they can check their portfolios again, and ensure their hedge funds and ETFs are still making money while all the little guys are losing with their pathetic and pedestrian mutual funds. Or...better yet....blindly buying into the next "Bull" to inflate the price- to -earnings ratio of the wealthier ones' stock shares - any threats to which they will be alerted to (to enact a pullout) before the next correction, thanks to heads ups from the institutional investors.

Meanwhile, the drones...errrr...dregs....will lose 50% of their 401ks again. They'll therefore have to return to the old grind  (work), never having learned to recognize a bubble - but rather being bamboozled by talking heads ....like Jim Cramer. Never mind! The Elites will be further enriched by the hoi polloi's losses! This plus knowing that every initial $160/yr. reduction - via chained CPI- from all 45 million S.S. recipients - will enable them to purchase a new yacht within 2 years!

Ah yes, the life of the typical one percenter. How sweet it is! Those elderly, senile farts? Let 'em eat cat food! Besides, it's loaded with Omega 3's for their creaking hearts!

For those who need to get up to speed on Neoliberalism, what it means, how it came to be, check out:

http://www.salon.com/2013/03/09/the_world_according_to_milton_friedman_partner/